Miranda Grosvenor

Miranda Grosvenor was the fictitious name of an elusive Louisiana woman who enchanted dozens of famous men with sweet telephone talk in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1999, Vanity Fair exposed the mystery woman as Whitney Walton (1941 2016), a Baton Rouge social worker and bored fan who made a full time hobby of calling stars. Her voice and conversation style were reportedly so alluring that wealthy and powerful men (including actors, musicians, and movie moguls) fell in love without ever meeting her, and rearranged their whole evenings around speaking to the mysterious stranger.

In 2000, HarperCollins paid close to $1 million for Walton's memoir, Miranda Rites: My Life As the Mysterious Hollywood Sweet Talker (aka The Miranda Mystique: How I Captivated the World's Most Desired Men), scheduled to be published in December 2006, as well as her audiobook rendition. The deal was struck after agent Dean Williamson hired a private detective to track her down, whereupon he finally persuaded her to tell her story. In January 2001, Robert De Niro, one of Miranda's former talkmates, purchased the film rights to the story. In late 2007 online book retailers advertised a January 2008 publication date and had identified the planned book as having with 256 pages. An audio version was also at one point available for pre sale on Amazon. com. In January 2008 HarperCollins reported that the memoir had been cancelled, without giving a reason. Grosvenor's creator, Whitney Walton, died of natural causes on February 24, 2016 in Baton Rouge, at the age of 74.